There's, obviously, a lot of stuff you can grow yourself. Weld. Madder. Tomatoes. Your own hair. Kombucha leather, which a designer couple from the US has used to make transparent face masks... you can read more about that here, and the article includes a link to instructions on how you can do it yourself.

It would be a very good thing to have biodegradable, sustainable masks. It would be a very good thing, actually, to have a lot more things biodegradable and sustainable, and maybe that bacteria-grown cellulose is a good solution for it? I can imagine having sheets of that for wrapping stuff as well.

At the moment, all the Covid19-precautions are leading to much more single-use stuff, and much more trash and landfill. Our favourite bakery doesn't accept any customer-brought bags or containers at the moment, so if we buy something there, it's always a paper bag or two. We see thrown-away masks everywhere outside these days. To protect from the virus, single-use cups are much more frequent again... and while the spread of corona is very much at the front of our attention these days (though if you look at some images from holiday places, or at other images, probably not as much anymore as it should be), if we're not acting quickly and decisively enough to stop our climate change, we'll be screwed even more by our planet heating up.

So here we are. Rock. Hard place. I do hope we'll be able to find a way that will let humankind have a future on this planet, because we quite obviously won't be able to find a new one (and a way to get there) quickly enough to save our asses. Seeing how much the common effort to keep everyone safe from the virus is going down, though, after only six months, and even though numbers everywhere are going up again? I somehow doubt it will be done.

There's not many traditional sheep flocks left in Germany, wandering around to graze here and there. Rules, regulations (sometimes really stupid ones, especially concerning herd protection dogs), the intensive agriculture in Germany, the many streets and roadways, and last but not at all least the very low price for wool are all making it hard for this way of keeping sheep to be economically viable. Yet sheep grazing is the thing that keeps some of the iconic landscapes of Germany what they are, and wandering flocks like that are the only way to preserve them.

One of the last flocks that remain is now trying to change the "no money for the wool" dilemma, to make things better. The shepherd (who is also active on twitter) started a Startnext campaign to sell their wool directly. It has been funded already, then met its second funding goal, but there are a few more days left to support it, and there's also (most importantly) some knitting yarn, carded wool, and other wooly product stuff left to get.

I think it's a wonderful project. Supporting the project means a reasonable price for wool, making sure traditionally-kept wandering flocks like Sven's flock can keep going, and helps to protect the very special environment in German regions that have been grazed on, and formed by this, for many years. Plus you get knitting or spinning fodder!

You can check out the project under "Paulas Wolle" at startnext, and support it there. Text is German only, but they do send their wool outside of Germany within the EU (sorry Great-Britain, you're out).

Status of things here: The cat is lounging on my arms (and half on the keyboard) again, and if I have not cuddled her for too long, I get admonished that her ear needs kneading, or her belly needs rubbing, or that she generally needs some more attention. There's a package waiting to be packed and brought to the post office together with the already-packed one (which will happen very soon), the usual stack of emails to be answered and taken care of, and there are way too many tabs open in my browser. Which, as you well know, means:

Time for a link post!

If you like to look at weird design choices for... stuff, check out the Instagram account "uglydesign". It's curated by two designers who are trying to find the ugliest thing there is (just like the name hints) - but obviously, beauty and ugliness are in the eye of the beholder, and I find some of the things not predominantly ugly, but more "cool in a weird way". (Some are utterly horrible to my personal aesthetic sense, though.)

EXARC has a new section about textiles, with a collection of interesting articles that will be extended with new ones as they come up. I especially appreciate that someone else also writes about the "it depends" thing, something that has come up again and again in my personal research and crafting, and that I think is very important when discussing time needed to do something (which, in turn, is a frequent topic both in Experimental Archaeology and in explaining aspects of medieval or historical craft to the wider public).

Now some bits in German:
Here's an interesting article about how much food gets thrown away in Germany, and how much of that would be avoidable. Especially bread, one of the staples, and considered a Very German Thing Indeed, gets binned in a horribly high percentage. Altogether, a third of the food produced ends up in the trash. A THIRD!!!
We've recently had some more trouble than usual with bread getting mouldy, reasons as yet unknown (different types of bread, or the weather, or contamination of our bread box, or a mix of things, or something else, possibly), and it always makes me really sad to have to throw it away. I have a general tendency of seeing food going bad as a personal failure, and I consider throwing away still-edible things as a kind of disrespect towards all the people who have worked on making this food.
This is a combination that you might call... interesting. On the down side, it leads to much chagrin for every bit I have to bin because it's really not edible anymore, which includes those where there was no way of avoiding the outcome (such as fruit that was damaged during transport and instantly changes from "unripe" to "covered with greenish fur"). It also includes me eating dodgy stuff, or things I don't really enjoy anymore because they have to be used, on occasion. On the up side, it means that relatively few food gets thrown away here, and that I have a good amount of creative approaches to leftover foods and their use.

On to something more positive: A medieval shipwreck was found in a German river, the Lippe. The wreck was found by chance by a hobby diver, and now gets checked out by archaeologists. It's about ten metres long and probably about 1000 years old; whether and how it will be excavated is still being evaluated.

And a last German link - there's an Interessengemeinschaft Zugpferde! I didn't know that until a while ago, when I stumbled across it via an article about sustainability in field- and forestwork. For small fields and in some circumstances, it makes more sense to invest in draft animals instead of trying to go "all western, all modern" and get a tractor, or other machinery. The IG Zugpferde tries to keep the draught horse and draught cattle use alive and offers all kinds of stuff around this - from competitions to workshops and courses to learn how to care for and use draught animals. I'm utterly delighted - and I hope there will be more draught animals in use in the future!

The not-lawn is in blooming season now - almost all the wild thyme has flowers, and they are very much appreciated by a gazillion of flying insects. Which, to my great dismay, means that I actually have to wear shoes when crossing the not-lawn, or use the paved garden path, and keep to the more trodden-down other paths without bloom when going to the paved section. I got stung twice within a good week, even though I was walking very slowly and carefully, one wasp, one bee or probably bumble-bee. That is a good indicator of there being many more insects in our garden than last year, as I walked barefoot all year then and didn't get stung once!

Since I dislike wearing shoes at home, and the garden counts as "home", this does annoy me... but I can accept it due to the joy the number of bees, flies, wasps, grasshoppers, and butterflies the not-lawn brings. I even spotted one special bee that's on the red list, though I didn't manage to take a photo of it (yet).

There are some other beasties I did manage to get decent pics of, though:

[caption id="attachment_5441" align="alignnone" width="640"] Male Gallische Feldwespe (European Paper Wasp), polistes dominula. Note the yellow eyes!


That was the first time we saw one of these; that guy was quite a bit larger than the ladies of the same species, which can be identified nicely by their long, orangey legs that hang down when they fly. It's one of the many wasp species that are entirely unattracted by meat or cake; they are also far less aggressive than "the" wasp Vespula germanica.

Next up: A very distinctive ass.

[caption id="attachment_5439" align="alignnone" width="567"] Gelbbindige Furchenbiene, Great Banded Furrow bee, Halictus scabiosae.


The furrow on the abdomen is what gives the name to this kind of bee. They're a rather frequent kind of wild bee.

Next one is not a bee, but a kind of fly masquerading as a dangerous sting-posessing animal:

[caption id="attachment_5438" align="alignnone" width="902"] Probably Eristalis pertinax, a quite common kind of hoverfly.


Last one is one I haven't managed to identify yet - because there's oh-so-many different kinds of wild bees and other flying insects here in Germany. I'm actually content to roughly identify them (as in down to the genus, not necessarily the species, and not even considering the sub-species), but, well, with about 600 different species of wild bees in Germany... Sad thing, though: About half of this number is on the list of endangered species, as they are quite specific about their habitat or food plants. Which is one of the reasons I will handle wearing shoes to cross the not-lawn (and do it as little as possible).

So here's my unidentified red-ass-bottomed, ass-lifting little wild bee:



If someone happens to know what it is, please tell me!

And for the German readers among you, here's one of the many pages about wild bees in Germany, with some basic info. There'll probably be a few more posts about these small flying guys, as I'm entirely fascinated by them, and I quite enjoy going on photo safari with the macro lens!

There's been a debate for years now about whether to feed birds year-round, or not. I've heard pros and cons for that, but never followed the debate really closely, as we're usually not feeding the birds (our neighbours upstairs and next door do that in winter, and I figured that would be enough).

Yesterday, though, I stumbled across a post on my Facebook feed about the dangers of feeding birds with the wrong feed in spring and summer - as that will actually kill their young. If you read German, you can read the full explanation here. For those of you not reading German, here's the short rundown:

Feeding birds during summer, especially in areas where they have little natural feed, is generally a good thing. But it has to be the right feed, else it will cause more harm than help. Suet-based feeds and fatty kernels are for winter feeding only; in summer, you should only feed small seeds from grass and wild flowers that also occur naturally in the area you live in. Another thing suitable for summer feeding is fresh or freshly killed insects. Never feed dried insects, as their salt content is too high for both adult and young birds.

One of the common statements is that the feed offered at feeding stations will only be consumed by the adult birds, who will feed "proper" things, such as insects, to their offspring. This is, unfortunately, not the case. The adults will also feed their young with the fatty seeds or suet-based feeds which are so easy to get from the feeding station. The small chicks cannot digest these foods; they block their intestines, and the chicks die over the course of several days with severe colics and constipation. (The German article linked to above also includes pictures, if you'd like to see what this looks like. Scroll down the page. Not for the faint of heart.) If they do survive, they often suffer misformations due to the malnutrition (too much fat, too little protein) from the inappropriate food. (Even winter feeding with fat food only can have negative consequences, as this study shows.)

So if you feed birds in your place - please take care to feed appropriate things only. The best way to support wild birds in your area is creating an environment where they find enough spaces to hide, build their nests, and where there are plants teeming with insect life so they can catch enough food for themselves and their brood. (Lawns are overrated anyways - go for a wild flower meadow instead. Not only will that be much more colourful, it will also save you all the work of lawn mowing...)

I've recently started to bake bread again (I blame one of our friends, who reminded me of the joys of sourdough), and if you bake traditional sourdough bread, the dough needs to hang out in a warm enough place for quite some time.

The typical hack for this is to put the dough in its covered bowl into the oven and turn on the oven light - just the lamp; this puts out enough heat to warm the inside of the oven to about 30° C if you leave the door open a bit. However, our oven is a shiny new-fangled thing with a light that goes out after about 15 seconds... so I needed another way to gently heat it up.

The solution? A candle or, in my case, an oil light. There was a bit of trouble at first, though, as the light went out after a short while - and it took me a little time to discover the reason. Which was... old oil on the swimmer.



When I sell these, I usually tell my customers that if they are not using the light for a while, it's a good idea to take the swimmer out and give it a good rinse to clean it, then dry it.

Very obviously I'm not always taking my own advice... this swimmer has been in use for a rather long time, with breaks inbetween uses where I sometimes took it out and rinsed it  and sometimes not. Over all this time, a good layer of gummified oil has accumulated both on the metal bit and on the cork.

That is, unfortunately, not just an optical issue - the gummified oil warms up when the light is burning, and then seems to get just liquid enough to get into the wick, blocking it up. Which means that the wick cannot get enough oil through anymore, and the flame goes out.

So - should you have an oil light that does not work properly anymore, check it for gummified oil; clean it if necessary (hot water and soda, and a good long soak in there, will help), or get a replacement swimmer.

There is a number of recipes intended to use up bread that is getting old - and I'm rather fond of this type of food. Whenever bread hereabouts threatens to get too old, it gets cut up into cubes, these are dried, and then they get packed away until needed. (Because we buy our bread in relatively small units in the bakery close-by, this is a rare occurrence... but then, there's the Textile Forum, where the caterers tend to bring way, way too much bread. Which, you've guessed it, gets cut up into cubes... and travels back home with me, causing much joy and serving as the base for quite a few servings of bread-based meals. It's not only delicious, it's also cutting down on food waste. Two good things in one.)

[caption id="attachment_5086" align="alignnone" width="486"] Bread mix, soaking. As you can see, it's a wild mix of all kinds of different breads... which can be a little surprising sometimes, when there's suddenly some pumpkin seed turning up!


One especially delicious way to use up that bread are Speckknödel (bacon dumplings). I was first introduced to those in Austria, and they are wonderful. Wonderful. It's basically old bread soaked in milk and/or water to make it soft again, mixed with egg (to hold it all together), onion, and smoked bacon, seasoned with salt and parsley, and then simmered in water. Traditionally, they are served with browned butter; a salad goes along with them nicely, as does red cabbage, or some other cabbagy vegetable.

Here's the recipe I usually use - the amount of liquid you need may vary depending on your bread:

250 g dry bread, cut into small cubes (c 1 cm side length works very well)
250 ml milk (or half milk, half water)
2 eggs
1 medium onion (ca. 80 g)
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
80-100 g bacon (smoked bacon), diced
3 tablespoons flour (c 45 g)
salt
butter

Pour your liquid over the diced bread and let it stand for a while (at least an hour, so the moisture can spread out through the bread). Dice the onion finely, then sautee it until translucent. Mix onions and bacon with the moistened bread. Beat the eggs, add salt and chopped parsley, and add that mixture to the bread mix as well. Let sit for about 15 minutes.
In a sufficiently large pot, bring water to the boil. Add salt and turn heat down a bit. Form dumplings from the bread mix (I get about 12-14 dumplings from the mix) and gently place into the water; they should now simmer (not boil) for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, brown some butter in a small pan or pot.

[caption id="attachment_5087" align="alignnone" width="640"] Dumplings!


Serve dumplings with browned butter and salad, or another side. Leftover dumplings are very nice sliced up and fried in butter, or sliced up and eaten cold.

The water used to simmer the dumplings also makes a very nice base for a soup on the next day...